My Gen X Playlist: American Idiot – Green Day

Sometimes I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. In my younger days, I jumped out of a moving car, cashed out my 401K and lost it all on a Vegas blackjack table and embarrassingly was taken by con artists in a game of three card monte atop a cardboard box while roaming around downtown LA. But there are degrees of my stupidity. The car was only moving 10 miles an hour at the time, I didn’t have much of a 401K in my twenties to begin with and I only lost twenty bucks searching for that damn ace of hearts. Stupid mistakes breeds wisdom, right? That’s what I tell myself. And if you tell yourself often enough, you just might end up believing it.

My buddy and I were reminiscing about our trek through the Amazon rainforest and I was reminded of another learning moment. Our guide pulled the group aside, pulled out his knife and punctured the bark of a tree. As the sap oozed out, we each dipped our finger for a drop and dabbed the tip of our tongue. There was an immediate numbing sensation. Apparently, the sap was used by indigenous cultures to treat pain and wounds. Fascinating. As we moved on, I lingered behind a bit for a second helping. Instead of a dab, though, I took a little scoop with my finger. What’s the harm in that? It’s all natural, isn’t it?

As I hurried to catch up with the group, I began to feel a little light headed. It was getting dark and I was beginning to become concerned with my foggy state. I pulled my buddy aside and fessed up to my second taste to which he shook his head in disbelief. He laughed and called me an idiot but also made sure I didn’t discreetly faint off the side of the trail. It was a little frightening for a while but we made it safely back to camp. Note to self: Never taste the anesthetic sap off a tree in the middle of the Amazon rainforest at night. Wisdom, right?

Well, the appropriate song to this story is the title track to Green Day’s album – American Idiot. Those two words say it all. The title speaks for itself.

American Idiot was released during the 2004 election. Since I’m trying to take a break from American politics, I’ll leave that part of the backstory out. Here’s something else that I found interesting.

Green Day had to start the album over from scratch after the masters for around 20 songs were stolen from the studio. “We had completely finished these songs, and we were getting ready to mix them,” Billie Joe Armstrong explained to MTV. “We walked out of the studio and came back the next day, and all of the masters had been stolen … but [American Idiot] was about making mistakes and fixing them.”

Songfacts

Making mistakes and fixing them. Sounds like adulting to me. I’ve often heard that we are not defined by any one mistake we make in our lives. Hopefully that also applies to my mixed sausage of hitting the pavement hard, doubling down with retirement savings and falling for the oldest card scam in the book. I’d like to think of those events as different flavors of my past. Dumb, yes. Without a doubt. I’ll give you no argument here. But it’s also something to laugh about when I reminisce thirty years later. American Idiot. I’m sure we’ve all had that stamped on our foreheads at one time or another. I’ve certainly had my fair share. Live and learn, right?

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For a complete playlist, please click here.

For the Spotify playlist, please click here.

Don't wanna be an American idiot
Don't want a nation under the new mania
Hey can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind-fuck America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation
Where everything isn't meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We're not the ones who're meant to follow
For that's enough to argue

Well maybe I'm the faggot America
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda
Now everybody do the propaganda
And sing along to the age of paranoia

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation
Where everything isn't meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We're not the ones who're meant to follow
For that's enough to argue

Don't wanna be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information Age of hysteria
It's calling out to idiot America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alien nation
Where everything isn't meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We're not the ones who're meant to follow
For that's enough to argue